gence. But such adherence and enjoyment essentially depend on likeness of nature. To attain the likeness of nature, therefore, to our Great Original, must necessarily be deemed the one great concern of our existence. Could, then, any thing be more reasonably supposed, than that, when we had lost our original portion of the divine nature, and were miserable through the want of it, the benignity of God should employ itself in remedying this evil? and might we not conclude that, when Divine wisdom had projected a scheme of reinstatement, the repossessing us with the animating principle we had lost, with that divine nature, wherein consisted the genuine life of our souls, and from which alone could arise real virtue or substantial comfort, would be the great object to which the plan would be adapted; and, with a view to which, all its elementary parts would be arranged and adjusted?

15

LETTER TO MAJOR WOODWARD ON
DOCTRINAL POINTS.

MY DEAR MAJOR,

Bellevue, June 2, 1807.

Ir has not been for want of a very sincere inclination that you are so long without hearing from me. A general indolence, I too well know, forms a part of my natural habit; and therefore, little matters, which firmer resolution might readily surmount, occur continually, and seduce me into procrastination. I did, however, actually begin a letter to you on the 20th day of last month; and, after filling one page, I was called away. When I came back, I found my ink had been, in the meantime, overthrown, and my written page so deeply blackened, as to make it useless to go on with it. Then came James Dunn and others here, who occupied my forenoons, and, in short, left me no more time than was necessary for winding up myself, — a business which, both as it respects body and mind, in me requires a large allowance of the day. My animal spirits being easily repressed, and soon exhausted, and then needing quiet, recumbent posture, and the return of the stream of thought into its own regular channel, in order to their being recruited.

I was much gratified by your enclosure, and still more, not very long after, by a visit from the lady herself. I am much pleased with her, indeed. She

has, I think, rather exceeded my calculation than fallen short of it; and she told me many particulars, not confined to herself singly, which gave me real pleasure. I sincerely hope you will have great comfort in your friends, and that Lady in

particular, will advance more and more in true wisdom, discreet courage, and inward, heartfelt piety. If she does, she will be a very happy creature for her former thoughtless secular life has laid in a sufficient depth of shade to give relief to the lights that, I trust, will henceforth be introduced and I cannot but think, that, to a thoroughly sincere mind, this, which I have mentioned, is turned into a peculiar source of strength and comfort. Still, I grant, that the uniform and cordial remembering of the Creator in youth, and through the early part of life, would be productive of yet higher blessedness; but, I fear, this is very rare, and that the most usual case is, that of negative harmlessness, and dull and narrow propriety; which, implying no feeling at all, furnish no matter for divine grace to transmute or conquer. On the contrary, the bold spirits who determinately take their course, and have nothing mawkish in them, when once subdued, have their own appropriate advantage. When they have really slain the lion of their nature, and come back to review it, like Sampson, they find within it a deposit of honey.

Lady mentions a book in her letter"Marshall on Sanctification." On talking to her, I found she scarcely recollected having done so, another book being in her mind. I was glad she

knew nothing of Marshall, for, most certainly, it is neither for her, nor any one who wishes to be soberly religious. I never read it, and presume never shall, for, having repeatedly read a character of it, and an eulogium given in the works of the well-known Mr. Harvey, I am in possession of its principles and plan; and my persuasion is, that no pious man could write a much more erroneous book. It is fitted to bewilder the understandings and distract the brains of its simple readers. He conceives, that love to God can only arise from a persuasion of God's distinguishing love and mercy to the individual as chosen in Christ (of course electively, before all worlds, though that is not expressly dwelt upon), his great means of sanctification therefore, is to be ever labouring after that persuasion; that is, the assuming at all hazards, that the person has been elected to salvation. This inward exertion, which is to be made right forward, he urges as the one thing needful, and maintains, that as this is more or less successful in producing the persuasion, all the various results of inward and outward holiness will, more or less, infallibly follow. This I conceive to be, on various grounds, most erroneous. "The spring of true holiness is," I think, by no means what Marshall makes it," a well-grounded persuasion of our reconciliation with God;" but, a conviction that God Himself is our most excellent and infinitely desirable end, and that sin is the worst of evils, as indisposing us for, and alienating us from, this end. If this feeling lie not at the bottom, wherein consists the piety or sanctifying tendency of either our desire or persuasion of recon

ciliation? If a heart-relish, a spiritual appetite for the knowledge and love of the Infinite Excellence (which St. Paul nobly denominates the Þgovnuce TVεUμLaTos), do not primarily actuate us, our desire of reconciliation, or persuasion of it, is no more religion, than the desire of one in prison, for some criminal action, to escape from his keepers, is religion. This, however, in the syllabus of the work, given in Harvey's works, and now lying before me, seems to be not so much as thought of. But, so far as it is not thought of, the prime principle of sanctification seems to me to be omitted; and, consequently, the whole system (though the man's own heart might be much better than his understanding) is a building resting on the sand.

It is astonishing how many of the Calvinists have taken this selfish, mercenary view of Christianity, making our love to God to spring primarily from our gratitude for mercy to ourselves; not considering, that that mercy, though exercised by an infinite Benefactor, is in the act but finite, because the object of it is finite, and therefore cannot inspire a temper, which, to be genuine, must be unbounded. Our gratitude itself, however intense, has the nature of piety only so far as we recognise, and are supremely engaged by, the transcendent nature of the Benefactor. In fact, affectionate assimilating access to this nature, is itself the essence of the benefit; and, therefore, we can have no gratitude worthy of God, till we love Him, in the first instance, for what he is essentially. The leaving out these grand ultimate views, strikes me as the chief defect in modern Calvinism; and a defect I must